Monday, 16 February 2009

Quinola Assahola.

“Do you actually work here or do you just like the look?”Those were my angry words, yesterday, to a Sainsbury’s employee. I’m fucking fed up of Sainsbury’s. Every time I go in there now it just gets more and more depressing. The vegetarian section is smaller than the custard section, they don’t sell decent booze and the people who work there are brain shittingly stupid or, and this can be so much worse, friendly.

I wanted to cook a vegetarian sausage stew. I found the recipe in a Sainsbury’s magazine. Part of the recipe called for Quinola. I don’t know what Quinola is. I’ve never heard of Quinola but I really wanted to cook something nice and vegetarian sausage stew sounded great so it was Quinola I had to buy. The thing about not knowing what Quinola is is that you don’t know what section to look in. The TV, crockery, DVD, shampoo and massive, massive custard sections were confidently crossed off my list and I headed to the vegetarian section. Both things in the Sainsbury’s vegetarian section were not Quinola. Let’s think; Quinola looked seed-y. Let’s have a look in the pulses section. Well, for some reason, Sainsbury’s pulses section is made up of mainly Spaghetti Hoops and Power Ranger’s Beanz n’ Sausage Bitez. I fucking hate Sainsbury’s.

I thought, I can’t spend all day in here, I’m going to have to….please, Lord, help me….speak to a member of staff. I looked around to see if I could find the most intelligent-looking member of staff available and, sure enough, Stumpy McAwful was dragging his face around the Nachos section. God, he looked depressed. Wearing a badge that says “Try Something New Today” must be a constant mockery to him. I couldn’t talk to him. I just couldn’t. I KNOW that he doesn’t know where the Quinola is. I can tell just by looking at his face on the floor. It would be a waste of time. Then I actually stooped to texting 118 118.

I love you, 118 118, because you told me that Quinola is a South American cereal grain that can be cooked like rice and is found in the rice section of Sainsbury’s. Excellent. I went straight to the rice section, stepping over any staff member’s faces in the way, confident that the Quinola was mine and I’d be out of this hole pretty damn soon. They didn’t have any. FUCK. I looked at basmati, long grain and fucking, fucking cous cous but there was nothing there with the name Quinola on it. I gave up. I’d found a great recipe, given to me by Sainsbury’s themselves, but could the place actually give me the ingredients? NO! I sighed. I gave up. I’ll cook something else.

Then, something worse than Lion-rape happened to me. A member of staff asked if they could help. This was incredibly unlikely. Unless I needed to know what the floor felt like on my cheek there is no way that this ball of wrongly placed flesh and bone could assist anyone. But at least he asked. That was a step in the right direction. Maybe he had finally got round to reading his badge and thought “Yeah, fuck it. I’ve never been in any way helpful before. I might give it a go”. I liked his spunk. Ok, I thought, let’s see if this kid (he was in his late 50’s) has got the goods. I explained that I was looking for Quinola and immediately I could see his mind packing for a month long holiday in his arse. Quinola baffled me, it might actually kill him. If he was alive, that is.

So, I explained what Quinola was. Then he pointed to where it should be. Basically, he pointed to Sainsbury’s. There was no real definite direction to the end of his pointing finger. No problem, I said, and walked away. He called me back because he was SURE that it was round here somewhere. He looked in all the places I had already looked. Don’t worry, I said, I’ll get something else. NO. He would find it. It had to be here. He spent three minutes looking at the same shelf, mumbling to himself. Look, mate, I’m going. This is a waste of time. It’s not here. Then he said that the thing that got me all cross. “No. No. No, sir. Seriously. There is definitely rice around here somewhere”. We were in the fucking RICE SECTION. We are surrounded by FUCKING RICE. That is rice and that is rice. So is that and that and that. I don’t want rice. I want Quinola.

He said “What is Quinola?”

Go to the beginning of this blog to find out what I said next before walking away from the floor-faced cunt.

By this time, I was too late to cook and went directly out to the pictures. I saw Milk. Milk is up for all sorts of awards like BAFTAs and Oscars. I can only assume that these nominations are jokes. It’s an awful film. Firstly, its indie by numbers. This scene is grainy and the next scene is over-exposed and the next scene is all silhouettes. Fucking pretentious, unimaginative crap. Secondly, it’s soooooooooo patronising. Gays move to town, people don’t like gays, gays are people too, why can’t the world see that? That’s as deep as you’re going to get?? There are some OK bits in the film but overall it drags, it patronises and it just doesn’t say too much. Harvey Milk’s life was obviously pretty amazing so well done to Gus Van Sant for going way out of his way to make that story dull. I don’t know how he did it. Mind you, I’ve seen his other films so I have a bit of an idea. Also, maybe it might have been nice if there was the occasional gay person in the film. What with it being about equality and all. After the film, I went drinking with real gays. DJ Kev and his civil partner, Marlon. It was nice to see DJ Kev after the five months that the Real Daniel O’Donnell Show has been on hiatus. I miss it. Once I get the hang of King of Everything I think I’ll put some pressure on to get Los Quattros Cunts up and running. Or not.

Gigs this weekend were excellent. Both Friday and Saturday at the Tattershall Castle were excellent. On Valentine’s Night it was FULL of couples and I couldn’t help thinking that a comedy club would be a horrible romantic date. But there were couples everywhere laughing together and having fun so what do I know? I know that I don’t have time to blog about the man on the train on a freezing Saturday night who sat opposite me wearing just a t-shirt and rolled up jeans plus I don’t have time to blog about little Alfie Patten demanding a DNA test. Always tomorrow though. Have a nice day.